Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
“You see this child: he is destined for the fall and for the rising of many…,
and a sword will pierce your own soul too…” Luke 2: 34-35
The Second Music
Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other lower,
steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.
When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.
I hear the children in the yard, the train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone.
I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.
∼ Annie Lighthard: Iron String
Let us pray:
Blessed are you who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness to its persistence
when everything seems in shadow and grief.
Blessed are you in whom the light lives,
in whom the brightness blazes –
your heart a chapel,
an altar where in the deepest night can be seen
the fire that shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illuminates every broken thing it finds.
∼ Jan Richardson: Circle of Grace p.47
